


i'm viewing the cosmos from our street

by weatheredlaw



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, References to Suicide, drunk bruce banner, sadness machine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-26
Updated: 2012-05-26
Packaged: 2017-11-06 01:38:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/413294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weatheredlaw/pseuds/weatheredlaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce slides off the barstool and Tony wishes he could say he stumbles, but no such luck. "I'm going to bed." He sniffs loudly, clears his throat. "You coming with me?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm viewing the cosmos from our street

**Author's Note:**

> this is for jessica, who had a bad day, and whom i love very dearly.

Is it his third whiskey? Fourth? Bruce nurses every drink like an open wound or an infant and Tony can't decide which one is worse. He drinks slowly and almost sullenly and by the time Tony has finished a bottle of wine -- by himself -- Bruce has only just barely finished his third drink. 

It had taken a Herculean effort just to get him to _have_ a drink. But three more, consecutively, had been no trouble at all. The trouble was getting him to act _different_ under the influence which was, apparently, going to take every bit of whiskey Tony had and, billionaire or not, he wasn't exactly excited about throwing all of it at only a potential blow-job/excellent night of excellent sex/life-long partner and friend who was a constant flight risk. Tony was an investor, after several other things, and when it came to relationships, he sort of tended to work things like a sale. It'd been a while, truthfully, since his last one. But it wasn't hard to get back in the saddle.

"You want another?" Tony asks, because he's obligated to, at this point, and if he's going down the "let's get trashed and bone" route, he might as well go all the way.

"Guess so." Bruce is never _really_ as melancholy as he sounds, Tony notes as he fills his glass. There's a smile on his face because he's having a good time. Steve is there, solemnly caring for his own glass of scotch, and Tony pities the man, for a second, because honestly there's no better feeling in the world than having a fucking bad day (three months in a cave) and coming home and sitting back with a glass of brandy (an entire bottle) and losing yourself for an afternoon (getting so trashed you forget what day it is and try to apply for Venezuelan citizenship).

Really. He feels bad for the good captain.

Barton is a heavy weight, but he's been trying to out-drink Natasha for an hour and Christ on a cracker that's probably, like, the worst idea, in the history of horrific ideas. Just god-awful.

He's losing, if anyone wanted to know.

"This costs, what, a couple hundred bucks a bottle?" Bruce asks, holding the glass up and peering at Tony through the etching. 

"Something like that."

"To your good fortune, then, Mr. Stark," he says, that fucking self-effacing smile threatening to tear Tony to pieces.

 

 

Sometime in the night, Natasha hoists Barton over her shoulder ("I'm _fine_ , woman, take your hands off me!") and Steve follows her out, saying it's a shame Thor couldn't be there, to no one but himself really because honestly, Tony would have lost an entire bar tonight, between the God of Thunder/Kegs and Bruce Banner -- and then it's just them. Bruce still has his fifth glass in his hand, but his cheeks are flushed and he's talking now, babbling a little bit in one of the more endearing ways Tony's heard someone babble.

It's all geek-speak. Gear head garble and tech junky talk and Tony eats it up like it's a second meal he wasn't saving for later and he vollies back and forth, tossing ideas from one head to another. He thought talking to Bruce might get boring after a while, but the tech speak is always broken up by these fantastic stories about saving kids on dirty operating tables, or backpacking through the mountains and being followed by a goat for thirty miles. 

"You honestly haven't lived until you've drank nothing but goat milk for six days."

"That _sounds_ like it would kill you. No, seriously. I'm _amazed_ you're not dead."

"I'm flattered that you have so much faith in my mortality."

"You don't?" Bruce narrows his eyes. "Guns are one thing. Ingesting more dairy than one man should? Another. Really. I saw a video on YouTube about it. YouTube's like--"

"I know what Youtube is, Tony. I only lived under a rock once. I'm pretty up to speed on what the cool kids are doing." He finally finishes the drink, shivering as the rest of it goes down. Tony is pointedly not watching the muscles of his neck flex and work as he does it, but he's also pointedly failing at not looking, too, so really, where does he even stand? "You should stop asking Steve to drink with us."

"I'm only being nice."

"He's a sadness machine."

"Said the man who tried to commit suicide."

God, he's a dick. Bruce shakes his head and wherever they were going just dies, drops to the floor and Tony can hear his potential blow-job dreams shattering into fine, dusty glass. 

"Sorry."

"Whatever." Bruce slides off the barstool and Tony wishes he could say he stumbles, but no such luck. "I'm going to bed." He sniffs loudly, clears his throat. "You coming with me?"

 

 

The first time they'd fucked it was sort of an accident -- though Tony has never boned anyone on accident, ever, because he has a purposeful sex drive, thank you very much. But, really, it was sort of an accident. An accident like when you just keep moving the same way as someone else and you shift back and forth in the hall together, just saying sorry, sorry, oh my god I am so sorry until the other comes in their pants. Gets by. The other person gets by and you reminisce about how awkward it was and you never want to do that again.

Except it happened and Tony jacked off to the memory for a week before he practically begged without begging to do it again. And Bruce smiled and they made out on top of a suit schematic for forty five minutes and there was rubbing and Tony totally came in his jeans and it was like highschool except better. And with more geeky dirty talk. Honestly, Tony's forgotten half the sexual physics puns they made, mostly because he hadn't realized there were so many. But then, Bruce used to do a lot of group work. Tony and JARVIS never really make a point to share pick-up lines. It makes it akward when other people are around.

 

 

"You get me drunk on purpose?" Bruce murmurs, and the only reason Tony knows he's drunk is because he smells like a bar.

"I will neither confirm--"

"Jesus, you talk too much, Stark, you know that?" Bruce kisses him, kisses him _for real_ and Tony fucking melts into his mouth, grabbing fistfuls of fabric and hair just to keep himself together. Bruce is tugging at his clothes, shedding his own and already half-naked by the time Tony manages to get himself out of his shirt. Bruce helps him with the rest, dragging his jeans down fast and shoving him onto the bed. Tony was never worried about Bruce losing it and he isn't worried about it now. There's some kind of control there that Tony is achingly jealous of. And maybe that's half the reason he's doing this -- because he's trying to taste it and borrow it and make it his control, too. He's trying to borrow Bruce's will power and it might be working and it might not. 

Bruce doesn't really pay attention to Tony at all for the first couple minutes. Not in a focused "we're going to fuck and I am never going to take my eyes off you" kind of way. His tongue and mouth is all over Tony's body, running down curves he already knows well enough to map with his eyes closed. And Tony just sits back and enjoys it, because Bruce's eyes will be on his when he's ready and that's the best part about this -- staring into something with the potential to cut loose the howling belly of hell right here in this room. Because watching the Hulk burst from Bruce's skin is a lot like what Tony would imagine watching the Devil burst from the earth would be like. He's seen animals dig their way out of debris and he's seen worms crawling out of the dirt after rain -- but sometimes he just _watches_ the way Bruce's muscles stretch and his body becomes not quite his own, not quite separate, and it's a beautifully grotesque thing to be obsessed with.

He might be wondering about organs and he might not be. If the Hulk's heart is green and beating like a marching band and if Tony would need extra hands to hold it and why the _fuck_ is he even thinking about this when Bruce's mouth is around his dick and he's starting to make eye contact, for real, now?

Tony is sick, probably. Definitely. He has issues. Everyone says so. Usually everyone is right.

He comes in Bruce's mouth, wishing there was a way to drag it out, but seriously, there's never a way with this guy. Not ever. Tony makes embarassingly sad noises when Bruce finally pulls his mouth off and looks at him with a more pointed gaze. He crawls up the length of Tony's body, kissing him and running his hand over the lenght of Tony's thigh.

"I, uh, sort of want to fuck you. Like, I want...I want to..." He shakes his head and kisses Tony instead, curling a hand in his hair. "Hold on." He disappears over the edge of the bed and Tony's shill shivering from his orgasm, still trying to collect the fragments of his present state of mind. He sees a condom in Bruce's hand, and he recovers the last ten seconds of conversation quickly enough to get really fucking excited. Subtly so, anyway.

"Oh _fuck_ yes."

Subtle for him, anyway.

Bruce nods, scrambling around again and coming up with fingers slicked wet with lube.

"Boy scout," Tony mutters, closing his eyes.

"I was one," Bruce says quietly. His voice is so calm, Tony forgets where they are. He realizes that Bruce might know everything about his childhood, but Tony is woefully unaware of Bruce's. His file was never completed, and it's pretty sparse, when Tony thinks back on it. 

Bruce teases his entrace, then pushes a finger home, to the knuckle, snatching a _whimper_ from Tony's throat. 

Except if anyone calls it a whimper, he'll fuck their shit up.

"Like this?" Bruce murmurs, stretching and sending Tony so close to the edge over and over again. His legs are boneless. He only nods and Bruce just keeps pushing, three fingers now, opening Tony and finally pushing the condom down his dick and working his way there. Tony freezes, adjusting and _whining_ , now, because he just wants _more._

Thank god for booze.

"I'd have done it sober," Bruce manages, and Tony needs to work on his mouth and the words -- _and noises, apparently_ \-- that come out of it. And that's all he says on it, fixing Tony with a look that clearly reads _if you want me, just ask for me._

Which Tony fully intends to do.

 

 

When Bruce comes and Tony's spent and they've made a mess of pretty much everything, they sit back with the window open onto the city street below. Bruce pulls on his glasses and rummages around for a book.

"Are you for real? Not even any post-coital conversation?"

"You wanna talk about work? The lab? The team?" Tony frowns. "I didn't think so. This is an article on the rapid mutations of bean plants, in case you were curious."

"I am now," Tony says, sitting up and reading over Bruce's arm. Then -- "I'm sorry. About the...the comments. Earlier." 

Bruce nods because he knows.

"It was shitty of me."

"Don't mention it again," he says. Then he turns and fixes him with a sort of not very zen-like, yodo-y sort of stare and Tony just nods and kisses him, because it's getting tense and he likes making out with Bruce and having sex with him and geeking out with him and generally just being himself around him. 

It's the sign of a good relationship, he figures. That someone can handle the worst of him like it's just...what he does. And Bruce doesn't judge because he can't, really. He can't look at Tony and tell him this isn't good enough and this isn't going to work like that because Bruce only opens his mouth after five glasses of expensive whiskey and even then, it's like pulling teeth. Bruce didn't mean to tell Tony he'd been a boyscout, just like he doesn't mean an hour later to tell him about his parents and what they were like and what he did as a kid and what he wanted to be when he finally grew up. 

"I mean, you never really grow up," he murmurs. Tony smiles. They're getting tired. He wonders if it'll throw off his streak of no sleeping for a short enough period to count, but then he's not really keeping track of all the nights he's spent in his lab, pretending that everything was dandy and a-ok because that's not him, nope not at all.

Bruce takes off his glasses again and the lights go down. Tony hears the sound of the book hitting the ground, counts to three, and feels Bruce's head against his shoulder. 

"Tell me about the rapid mutations of bean plants," Tony murmurs. He feels Bruce's lips curl into a smile on his arm. "I mean, it sounds fascinating."

"Go to sleep, Tony."

"I bet you were the best boy scout."

"Troop leader," Bruce mutters, rolling onto his back. He flicks Tony in the ear, but he's laughing all the same. "Lights out at nine, every night."

"Stick in the mud."

"If you say so."


End file.
